Father, I pray that you would just come now, and as we enter back into the book of Revelation, that you would simply come and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf. As we continue in this book, as we go from chapters 12 to 22, there's much more here about fighting, there's much more here about battles, and all of those battles are with the enemy. I pray that you would make that clear. I pray the gospel this morning would be both comforting and convicting. I pray that it would tweak us. It would move us. Father, I pray for myself that you would be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart, and in my understanding and in my mouth, and in my speaking. In Jesus' name, we pray these things, amen, and amen. Well, Jamie mentioned at the beginning that I always have some stories with my, from vacation or trips, and this is no different. People often ask when you come back from vacation or your pastor, they often say, you know, so how is your vacation? Or they say, was it restful? Did you get some rest? Because you're concerned, rightly so. And I always struggle because I have a, it's both a gift and a curse that I can, I'm almost unable to say anything, but actually what I think. And so people say, so is your vacation good? Was it restful? Mmm. I'm not sure how to say that. How do I put this? How I put this, what sounds like it actually was when it really was fair. Mmm. You see, it actually started out pretty well. We were going to do a family camp in Idaho, which I did. There's a new APC church that invited me to speak there, and they said, bring your whole family very real. I mean, like it redefined real in my mind, actually. And so I went, and before we actually drove to Idaho, I called the pastor and said, you know, I'm training for this marathon. And I got, I'm supposed to run 15 miles. The Friday morning we arrived. Can you figure out a track for me kind of thing? And he said, oh sure, I'll set you up. And so we got to Idaho in that night, the pastor was sort of dusk. And he said, oh, let's get in the car. Let me show you where I'm going to have you run, the 14 or 15 miles. And there was a big circular track. And you looked at it on the map. And as he was showing me, we drove. And there was like a big combine in the middle of the road at some point. And we couldn't pass. And he said, well, you know, this is about the 7 mile point. And you'd just keep going past the combine and just follow the road all the way around and back. And I said, that's cool. And so that night we got back to his house. He said, and here's mosquito spray. He gave me three bottles. And I said, what's that for? He said, well, West Niles really a problem here. West Niles virus. And I said, like, you mean like your head? Well, West Niles, he's like, yeah, he's like, you know, only 10 people have gotten it recently. You know, it's not a big deal. And I said, fine, what I didn't do is I wish I would have known. You see when you're running and you, it's like a three degree sort of incline down. Would you can't really tell? In fact, you sort of feel like you're pretty good. But when remember where I told you that combine was? So next morning, I took out the running. And it was great. I mean, I felt great. I'm running through corn fields and hot fields. And farmers have gone by and the trackers. I'm, you know, giving me all the high fives and trucks are risen by. And as soon as I turned at that seven mile point, the first thing I noticed that I was looking into the straight into the sun. And I got that 20 degrees hotter. But then I also noticed what he didn't tell me was the first mile of that turn was straight uphill. And the second six miles of that were only moderately uphill. And during that whole time, I was attacked by dogs in the rest in six times. And I mean, I was an attack in the sense that they did. You know how they come running out from them on the corn. And they just want to scare you. They're like, hey, watch this. And you know, and you're just like the new guy. I remember that tack on. And I promised you out by 10 miles. I was so miserable. I was praying that one of those combines would quit me. I'm serious. I thought, you know, quit me. Don't kill me. It's a reason to call for a ride. When the dogs would come out, I'd give them both of my hands. Just bite a little net so I don't have to do this anymore. In fact, I was done. I was close to ever come to quitting. And I must have taken a wrong term because right when I was getting ready to quit, I looked over and there was the pastor's house where I'd left from. And I figured that was a smiling providence that I was only supposed to run 14 instead of 15 miles that day. And the question a lot of you have to be asking yourself is because all I do is complain about training for this marathon. Why bother? And you know, that's the question that's longer. It gets I ask myself to be honest with you. Why bother? In some ways, it's just good for the stories. And sometimes it's good because I can say I finished something. But you ever ask yourself a question, why bother? You're into something and you go, well, okay, that doesn't make sense. Why bother? It's the same thing in the book of Revelation. We've been looking at book of Revelation for a long time now. And it's been in some sense like Marathon. At least for me, it has in a lot of ways. And you get to chapter 11. And at the end of chapter 11, it tells us about the end of the end. Now, we definitely say to him who is to come and who was and is and is to come. It just says to him who was and is because Jesus has already come by chapter 11. The jig is up, everything is over. And yet John continues, or God continues to reveal to John, chapter 12 all the way to 22. And the question is, why bother? It's a pretty big marathon up to chapter 11. A lot of people told me, man, this is a person that I've really looked at, Revelation. And part of it is because it's a lot of work. So why would you bother continuing on more if you take it all the way to the end when you get to chapter 11? Well, practically speaking, it's because the vision, if John's having this vision, that doesn't end in 11, it continues in to chapter 12. But part of it is because of what we're called to do and because of the nature of life. What you see in Revelation 12 through 22 is what it means to live as a Christian. And what it means to live as a Christian oftentimes means struggle and strife and trials and tribulation. And Revelation 12 through 22 tells us why that's important and how come that's important and how come that's even the case. Especially chapter 12. You've heard me say, I know a number of times that nothing's easy. Right, nothing. And yet, when you look at Revelation 12, you're going to find out today why nothing is easy. Why, if your Christian is nothing easy, why aren't relationships easy? Why isn't your job easy? Why isn't church easy? Why isn't any of this stuff easy? Today, you're going to find out. Before we jump into chapter 12 finishing 7 through 17, let me give you a little bit of review. So the first question is, what is this book? Right, I've been gone for three weeks. And I assume you forgot everything we've talked about for the past six months. What is the book? Remember, it's three different kinds of literature, sort of mashed up into one. Number one, it's an apocalypse. And an apocalypse reveals something to us. It's like the pulling back of a curtain. And what does it reveal to us? It reveals to us the person and work of Jesus. It's also prophecy that John says. And what does a prophecy do? Most of us tend to think of prophecy in terms of something that predicts the future. And sometimes it does. Most of the time, it actually doesn't. But what it always does is it's looking for some kind of moral response. In other words, it's calling us to have faith. It's calling us to repent. It's calling us to believe something. So the reason it's a prophecy is all this stuff that John's giving is given to us so that we might move in some direction. And finally, it's a letter. Remember, he says to the seven churches that are in Asia. And he ends it by saying grace and peace to you all. So no matter how wild and how wacky you think the middle of this book of Revelation gets, you've got to always keep in mind that it's a letter. And it was given to encourage churches that are probably struggling with their faith. They're either struggling to make it through persecution or they're struggling because they're compromising. And they're not actually struggling at all, which is a struggle. And so what's the purpose of the book? Remember, I've told you often that the purpose of the book on one hand is just to make the case that Jesus wins. That Jesus has won in the past, that at the cross, every bit of work that Jesus was going to do on our behalf was completely and utterly finished on the cross in the past. And that Jesus will win in the future. In other words, he's going to finally clean up all things and all things will be renewed, that all things will be reconciled to him through the blood of his cross. And ultimately, it will be complete and finished, but also that he is winning right now. He's winning the world to himself. He's winning victory over the devil. And why is he winning right now? That's the question. Remember, at the end of Matthew 28, he said to his disciples, and to us, go into all the world and make disciples. That the last thing Jesus said to his disciples was, go. To go into all the world to witness to the gospel of Jesus, my gospel in his case, witness to that. In the book of Revelation, in some sense, is an exposition of that. He's telling them over and over why they should go. The reason they should go is because he has won, but also that they have overcome. And at the end of all times, he wants to bring as many people into the kingdom as possible. In other words, to be outwardly faced. And so then the question, of course, with 12, which asked before, is what now or why bother? If you're, imagine a member of one of those seven churches, and you've gotten to chapter 11, and you say, OK, Jesus wins, and he told us to do all this stuff. So what now or what's the point now? What do we need to know now in order to move forward into the struggle, to move forward into witnessing with the gospel? And then in chapter 12, you have very important information that helps you make sense of the world, that helps you make sense of why we should take the gospel to those who are outside the faith. And it helps you understand what it means to actually bear witness and have testimony of Jesus and all of these kinds of things. So with that said, I do have three points for you today. At first point, it's simply that you're going to see a war in heaven, and then you'll see a victory proclaimed, and then finally an ongoing battle. So that's a war in heaven, a victory proclaimed at an ongoing battle. So the first thing, we're war in heaven. Let me read to you, verses 7 through 8. He says, now war arose in heaven. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. So the question you have to ask here is, what is this war in heaven? And what does it have to do with the rest of the text? You see in verses 1 through 6 of chapter 12, if you remember, I told you that's basically an explanation of the whole gospel. They God promised he would send the seed of the woman to defeat the serpent, and he does the dragon, or the serpent tries to destroy the woman. He tries to destroy the child. She has the child, the child's victorious, and he raises from the dead in a sense of heaven. That's verses 1 through 6. So then all of a sudden you start hearing about this war in heaven. Before you even understand what the war in heaven means, you've got to decide which perspective you're going to come at it from. So the first perspective is this, but as usual, I'm going to give you the correct one. As usual, that was a joke. It's true, but it was supposed to be funny. One perspective of this war in heaven where you hear now there was a war in heaven and Michael and his angels fought against these demons is that it was pre-creation or before creation. In others, before the creation of the world, what you see is Satan, Michael battling Satan in his minions and casting them down. Now the problem with this view is you don't find it anywhere in the whole Bible. In others, no other place in the Bible actually bears witness to that. In fact, where you mostly hear that kind of thing is paradise lost. In fact, most of what people believe about hell and heaven and those kinds of things come from John Milton and not from the Bible. So if you say it's pre-creation, well, we don't know that for sure because no other place in the Bible tells us that before creation, we know that Satan rebelled and we know that he is an enemy of God, but we don't know that it was a result of Michael and his angels fighting and all of this kind of stuff. So if it's not before the creation of the world, then what are the other options? Well, the next option is that it could be post-resurrection. Some scholars think it might be that. In other words, Jesus came and died on the cross, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and Satan was so mad that he assaulted heaven and Michael drove him back and defeated him and threw him down to earth. That doesn't really make a lot of sense either because Jesus has already won. By the vice-resurrection and ascension, Jesus has become king of the universe. I mean, he was anyway, but now he was proclaimed. It just doesn't make sense. And we know that Satan was already on the earth causing trouble before that. So the third option might be that this is symbolic. And so you know my bias. You see, if you're reading a passage of Scripture, you're reading a chapter in the Bible, and everything in that whole chapter is symbolic, and then you come to one or two verses, you probably are in good shape if you take those as being symbolic as well. And when you look at it in the context of how the ancient Near Easterners would have looked at things, in the ancient Near East going all the way back to the Egyptians and even further, what they believe that whatever was happening on earth, whatever struggles were happening on earth were mirrored in heaven. In other words, as we were battling on earth, say if we were going to battle, then the angels and those who protected us would go to battle in heaven and vice versa. And probably what's going on here is verses 7, 8, 9 are really just another version. What did I write down there? There are heavenly counterpart of verses 1 through 6. In other words, as we're explained in 1 through 6 about the dragon coming after the woman and trying to stop the birth of the Messiah and the Messiah winning, what you see is the heavenly counterpart of that same event. And that makes sense because when you look at the book of Daniel, where you were introduced to Michael, in the book of Daniel, we find out about Michael in chapter 10, especially that he is the protector of Israel. He's sort of like the captain of the angelic guard, but one thing we often forget, even in Daniel where Michael is battling the prince of Persian, these other things, it's pretty cool, is that Michael only battles at the behest of his general and his general or his commanding officer is the son of man. In other words, Michael is just not sent out there to do bidding. Michael actually is working with and for the son of man that is Jesus. And so, as Jesus is accomplishing his will on earth, as Jesus is winning this battle on earth, so Michael is doing the same thing in heaven. But the interesting thing, in the ancient areas, they would often think that the battles were fought in heaven, and the gods would fight each other, and whoever won there would determine who would win on earth. Here is the exact opposite. Whatever happens on earth is going to determine what happens on heaven. So if Jesus loses on earth, then Michael loses in heaven. If Jesus wins on earth, then Michael wins in heaven everything that happens with Michael, just like everything that happens with you and I is completely contingent upon the person and work of Jesus. And so what you have in verses 7 and 8 is basically a heavenly counterpart to what's actually going on on earth and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. And there is more to it in verse 9, we see the dragon has revealed the verse 9. It says the great dragon was thrown down that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him. And then once you notice what the dragon is revealed to be. The dragon is revealed to be that ancient serpent, the one who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. So in order to understand who the dragon is and who this ancient serpent is, you've got to go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3. Remember in Genesis chapter 3, God put Adam and Eve in the garden and said don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that ancient serpent, the devil, came and tempted Eve and persuaded Eve otherwise. He deceived her and his job now, what Satan does now, what the devil does now, what the ancient serpent does now is the same thing he did in the garden of Eden. In other words, the same program he started then, he just, he promotes the same program now and the program of the evil one of Satan of the devil is primarily deception. It's just deception and the question is how does he deceive us, what are the lies that he has us believe and there's one primarily. You know, I've, some of you see me pick up this Jesus story book Bible, Susie gave it to me to help teach Sunday school about a month ago and since then I've given about six of them away. In fact, I used it if that retreat I did and I preached on one part and after I finished a woman said, aren't you going to read the story Bible to us too? It's really good. Let me read to you how this story Bible talks about Satan's deception. The snake's words hissed into her ears, that's Eve, sunk down deep into her heart like poison. Does God love me? Eve wondered, suddenly she didn't know anymore. Just trust me, the serpent whispered, you don't need God. One small taste, that's all you'll be happier than you could ever dream. Eve picked the fruit and ate some and adamate some too and a terrible lie came into the world. It would never leave. It would live on in every human heart whispering to every one of God's children, God doesn't love me. You see Satan deceives us, he tells lots and lots of lies to us but the primary lie that Satan wants you and me to believe is that God doesn't love me. How could he look at yourself? You're wretched, you're miserable, you're sinful, you've never done anything right, have you? And even if you have right, you have done things right, you've made it look good on the outside, all of us know, don't we? That you're just a sham. How could God love someone like you? That's the lie. You see because the lie says that God doesn't love you, God couldn't love you and the truth of the gospel is that God does love you. And the way we know that God loves us, the book of first John says that God demonstrates, or Romans has God demonstrates his own love for us and this is that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And that this is love, not that we love God but that he loved us and gave his son as a propitiation or payment for our sins. And so if you ever wonder, if you ever doubt whether or not God loves you, look at the cross. Look at the cross. That's what the New Testament says. That is the supreme evidence that God loves you and he loves you so much he's willing to give anything, even his only son. Anything else that you believe is a lie straight from the pit of hell. It's a lie straight from the lips of Satan. And so if Satan is what wants you to believe that, if God doesn't believe that, why do we often believe that? Why do we listen to the lies of Satan? And only you can answer for yourself, but what I would propose instead of listening to the lies of Satan, listen to the promises of God. Look to the cross. And even when you can't look to the cross, remember this. One of my favorite lies from Charles Virgin is this. He says that even when my eye is dim, even when I can't look to the cross to remind myself of the gospel, he said what encourages me is that the Lord's eye is not dim. In other words, even when I forget to look to the cross, what encourages me is that God never forgets to look at the cross. God never forgets how much He loves me. He never forgets that my sins are paid for and He will never hold them against you. That is the promise of the gospel. And if you're going to go into a battle with Satan, the first thing you need to know is that God, in fact, does love you and that God will never cast you out. And the cross tells us that leads us to the next point of victory proclaimed. Now I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and power in kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brethren, brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God. They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, they love not their lives, even to death. I pray for rejoice so heavens and you who dwell in them, but woe to you, O earth, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows that his time is short. There's three words I want you to remember from these verses from verse 10, the word accuser or accuser. Let me read that to you again. He says, now the salvation and power in kingdom of our God and the authority of Christ have come for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God. So lots of times in the book of Revelation we hear this sort of praising of God, the authority all be all be on to the lamp, power and glory and wisdom and honor and all these things. Here we have God being praised and the reason he is being praised specifically God and his Christ is because or for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down the one who accuses them before God day and night. In order to understand that you need to look at both the Jewish literature but also even the book of Job, Jamie opened with that this morning. Remember the book of Job, Satan apparently at some point in history had access to God's throne and what Satan would do at God's throne would constantly accuse the saints, God's people of their sins before God. He was like a lawyer bringing a prosecuting a case against them and you know what, he was always right. He was right. If he came before God and say look at him, look at Tommy, look how miserable he is, look how sinful he is, look at what an idolater he is, how angry he is, how judgmental he is. All of these things, look at him, is there any reason that you cannot convict him as guilty? Remember Romans, I think it's Romans 3 where it talks about sins passed over in the past because God was basically staying execution until something else happened. And yet Satan's job was constantly to accuse the saints before God and here we see that one of the saints greatest praises that rings out in heaven is that the accuser has been thrown down. In other words, Satan no longer is in the presence of God accusing you and me of our sins because of the work of Christ there is no ground for that accusation. That's pretty big if you think about it. That he has no reason to stand before God and say Tommy is guilty, he's an adulterer, he's a loser, he's all these things because in the presence of God and in the sight of God I am no longer those things. You are no longer those things. If you have trusted Jesus, you are as righteous as he is right now and there's absolutely no ground for accusation against you. There's nothing that can be said against you because you in fact have the righteousness of Jesus credited to your account if you are Christian. So the question is if God will no longer listen to accusations against you, why do you listen to accusations against yourself? And I know you make them because I know you think you are a horrible father, you're a horrible mother, you're a horrible kid, you're a horrible job, you're never going to make anything of yourself, nothing ever is going to happen. All these accusations that are constantly coming at you, what you need to remind yourself of is that God doesn't hear those and that you shouldn't listen to them. But instead of listening to the accusations of Satan, you ought to be listening to the promises of God, I will never fail you or forsake you, I promise you, be strong and courageous. Think about that, the next word that's important here is also conquered. Verse 11, it says, they, that is the saints have conquered him Satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony for they love not their lives even to death. So notice he doesn't say that Jesus has conquered Satan which he has, he says that the saints that you and me have conquered Satan by the blood of Jesus. So in other words by our faith in Jesus, Satan has been conquered. So not only can he not accuse you anymore but in fact he has lost to you and the reason he has lost to you is because of the blood of Jesus and notice it's said by the word of their testimony. The word of their testimony is a specific reference to them giving testimony to the gospel of Jesus. Remember this whole book is about being outwardly faced at some level. And the way that the saints won is that they not only did they not believe the accusations not only did they conquer through the blood of Jesus, they were forgiven, but also they bore testimony to Jesus. And again, we have to ask ourselves every week what it keeps me from bearing testimony to Jesus. It says here that they did it even unto the loss of their life. And the question we have to ask ourselves, or we want to do it even to the inconvenience of my average of my day to day activities. I realize that. And yet more and more we need to keep in mind how important all of this is. Finally, look at the last word is urgency. Verse 12, it says, therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them, but woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, for he knows that his time is short. So Satan has been thrown down to earth. Notice it says, heavens rejoice because Satan is no longer here. Earth, however, woe unto you because Satan actually has been thrown down to earth and his wrath is great because he knows that his time is short. What am I getting at here? It's just this is that Satan believes the gospel. He doesn't believe it's in a saving sense like Christians would, but he definitely believes the facts of the gospel. He believes that Jesus was crucified and that he rose again and that he ascended to heaven and that someday he will return and finish all that he started. And between that time and the end time, Satan only has a little bit of time and he is going to make the most of it. And so he comes and he bears out all of his wrath and all of his anger because he knows his time is short. In other words, Satan looks at the gospel and it gives him a sense of urgency. And the question again, we have to ask ourselves do we as Christians, if you are a Christian, look at the gospel and does it give you a sense of urgency knowing that Jesus has ascended to heaven and he will one day return. And from that time until the time he ascended till the time he comes back, there is only so much time to talk to those who don't know Jesus about him, to bear witness to him, to go maybe on the mission field some of you. Do we think in those terms? Unfortunately, Satan does. He doesn't waste the moment. He doesn't procrastinate. I don't imagine he sits around watching a lot of television. He has a sense of urgency because his time is short. It leads us to the last part. A battle to persevere. Verse 13, he says when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to a male child. But the woman was given the two wings of a great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness to a place where she's been nourished for a time and times and a half a time. The serpent poured out water like a river out of his mouth after the woman to sweep her away with the flood but the earth came to the help of the woman and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed. And the river that the dragon poured from his mouth. And again, I'm going to give you three words or phrases. The first word that is important here is the word Exodus. Really what you see here is a reliving or reworking or recapitulation of the Exodus. Remember what happened in the Exodus that God delivered Israel from Egypt into the wilderness and Pharaoh and his minions pursued. And as they pursued Israel passed through the waters and as Pharaoh and his men tried to go through the waters the waters came and engulfed them. And what's interesting here is the woman also starts her Exodus and she goes into the wilderness to escape the evil one. And what's interesting though is the evil one tries to use one of God's tricks. He tries to swallow her up with water but it says here that the earth swallowed up that water. The earth wouldn't she couldn't be touched because she's being protected during her Exodus. And it said that God even gave her the wings of an eagle. It sounds like Isaiah chapter 41. A lot of other places in the Bible. And it basically the promise here is that she will be protected for a time and times and a half. That's 42 months, it's three and a half years. That's the time from Jesus ascension until the time he comes back. In other words the woman is the church. We established that the last time I talked about this. And the church God's promise is that one will be an Exodus. If you try and settle down in this world you're always going to be disappointed. If you have to remember that we are in some sense always in the wilderness but that God also protects us through the wilderness. And that's an important thing to glean is that the wilderness is not just a place where it's hard but the wilderness is a place where God protects us. And another thing to keep in mind is this phrase. The phrase lame duck. Why is Satan so mad? If you're familiar with the phrase lame duck it usually has to do with politicians. And what a lame duck politician is if you're not familiar with the term is someone who's lost in election but they still have three or four months left to serve. And since they've lost the election and they know they're leaving people are often afraid of what a lame duck president or a lame duck congress or a lame duck sentence. What they're going to do because they have nothing left to lose. They're lame ducks. They've completely lost and now they only have a little bit of time before they are actually completely gone from office. And in that time is when they tend to cause trouble or they can cause trouble and people are afraid of that. Well that's exactly what's going on here with Satan. He's a lame duck demon. He has no power. He has no strength. He has no might. At least not real power and strength and might. Why? Because he's been completely and utterly defeated at the cross. There is no more deception. There is no more accusation. There is no more of any of that. And yet he still knows that he only has a little bit of time between the time he was defeated and the time he will be kicked out of office if you will. And during that time he wants to cause as much trouble as he can. And what the gospel says, what this says is that God's promise is that he protects us in the midst of that time. And the final thing I want you to notice about this is that the way this text ends is in the present tense. Verse 17 says, then the dragon became furious with the woman that's after she had escaped them and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring on those who keep the commandments of God and who hold the testimony of Jesus. So the woman continued to escape and the dragon became furious and all of a sudden it's in the present tense to make war on her offspring presently. That's you and me on those who keep the commandments of Jesus right now, those who bear testimony right now. So why do I bring that up that it's in the present tense because you always look at the book of Revelation. Some of it's in the past, some of it's in the future, some of it's in the present. But always the application needs to be in the present. Here it's clearly obvious that there is an evil one who seeks to destroy us like a roaring lion. There's one who comes to make war on us but the question is, are you armed for the battle? Are you armed for the battle with the blood of Jesus? If you're not a Christian, have you trusted in Jesus? In other words, if you're not a Christian, I'm not just saying this to scare you but there's a devil out there who wants you just as bad as he wants Christians. Have you trusted Jesus in order to win that primary victory? And for the rest of us, if you are a Christian, are you willing to bear testimony to Jesus regardless of what the devil will bring against us? Because he will. The more you do that, the more you should expect trouble. You know, oftentimes I tend to get in a lot of trouble. I don't know why. But usually the more trouble I'm in, that almost the more it affirms my calling. Because I figure if I wasn't making someone angry, then I must be doing the wrong thing. And I don't mean you guys, I mean Satan himself. He has to hate it when he sees people become Christians. We baptize someone this morning who would become a Christian here. And more and more, the more we become outwardly faced, the more that you can expect attack from the outside. On one hand, on the other hand, the more joy and power there will be as well. Think about that. Let me pray for us. Father, I pray that as we continue to look at this book of Revelation, that you would motivate us to continue to bear testimony to Jesus, that you would motivate us to not listen to accusation, to not be deceived. But in fact, to keep our eyes continually on the gospel of Jesus and upon his cross, not upon politics, not upon the world events, we should keep our eye on those things and keep track of them. But those don't define who we are, you do. And I pray that you have worked that into our hearts. Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen.